Numerous tools have been developed to aid in network management involving capacity planning, fault management, network monitoring, and performance measurement. One example of such tools is the network analyzer.
In general, a “network analyzer” is a program that monitors and analyzes network communications, detecting bottlenecks and problems. Using this information, a network manager can keep communications flowing efficiently. A network analyzer may also be used to capture data being transmitted on a network. The term “network analyzer” may further be used to describe a program that analyzes data other than network communications, or may also be used to classify packets into flows. For example, a database can be analyzed for certain kinds of duplication, etc. One specific example of a network analyzer is the SNIFFER® network analyzer manufactured by NETWORK ASSOCIATES, INC®. Traditionally, network analyzers have only been able to collect and analyze network traffic utilizing traditional protocols.
Lately, network-based applications have begun to use a new kind of network services called web services. Until recently, new network services defined their own way of behaving, i.e. their protocol, in an ad hoc fashion. Application client programs needed to inherently know how new protocols worked in order to use the newly developed services. Like their predecessor network services, web services use existing standard protocols, notably hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), to transport the associated application network traffic.
In use, web services employ additional protocols, called description and discovery services. These services describe how each web service uses the underlying transport protocol to convey the network messages that the particular service needs to complete the necessary work and convey the appropriate results. In this way, web service applications can continue to work when web service protocols change. This permits application developers to divide their software into multiple web services, each defined by the needs of the application.
Network traffic analyzers, like the SNIFFER® network analyzer, typically capture and store network traffic for a period of time, and then interpret the stored traffic to present information about the traffic. With older service protocols, interpretation is straightforward, since they change infrequently.
Unfortunately, interpreting web services presents more of a challenge. A web service application developer expresses much of the application architecture in the related protocols, which change as the application evolves. Network traffic analyzers cannot present much meaningful information about such a vast array of protocols. The information does not mean enough to be useful to the network analyzer users without also acquiring and using adjunct information from other services, like the description and discovery services previously mentioned.
There is thus a need for a network analyzer which overcomes these and other shortcomings in the prior art.